Student-Built Robots to Race in Mock Mars Rover Challenge

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SALT LAKE CITY What does it take to build and command a vehicle
capable of exploring Mars? Ninety students from around the world
are about to find out.

Next week, in a remote desert in southern Utah, 10 teams from the
United States, Canada, India and Poland will compete in the
annual University Rover Challenge (URC). The competition is
hosted by the Mars Society, a non-profit research organization
dedicated to promoting the exploration and eventual settlement of
Mars.

The competition site is located at the society's Mars Desert
Research Station (MDRS), a rocky barren landscape that's about as
close to Martian terrain as you can get on Earth. [See
also: 7
Most Mars-like Places on Earth ]

Each team was allowed to spend up to $15,000 on their rovers,
which can weigh no more than 50 kilograms — about 110 lbs.

On Monday (May 27), the first members of the URC team will arrive
at the Research Station to start setting up, Kevin Sloan,
director of the URC, told us. The competition will begin early
Thursday morning as teams leave their lodgings in Hanksville,
Utah (Pop. 215), and travel about seven miles along a road that
dwindles to a dirt track. Over three days, teams will use their
vehicles to compete in four challenges, designed to replicate the
activities of NASA's rovers on Mars.

For instance, Mars
rover Curiosity, now in its ninth month of a two-year mission
on Mars, has recently been deployed to its second drilling site
to take rock samples, analyze them for evidence of microscopic
life and send the data back to NASA. Likewise, teams will guide
their rovers to collect the subsurface soil samples most likely
to contain photosynthetic bacteria, lichen and other bits of
living material.

The specific tasks change each year, but the most difficult ones
continue to be those that need rovers to do humanlike work.

"Year after year, the tasks that involve manipulation — that is
to say using the robot's arm and hand to do meaningful work —
really stress the teams' systems the most," Sloan said.
"Manipulation from a mobile platform is one of the biggest
challenges in the robotics community."

Like NASA controllers, team members must guide their rovers via a
remote connection, such as a computer in the back of a truck, as
long as it's shielded so the team can't see their rovers. The URC
is based on the assumption that the rovers are telerobots, which
means they would be operated by astronauts on or orbiting Mars.

In addition to collecting soil, the rovers will deliver a series
of packages, such as emergency supplies to "astronauts" (URC
staff) in the field, fix a dust-covered solar panel (without
water, of course) and finally, navigate an obstacle course that
will include climbing steep grades, getting over boulders and
passing through PVC pipe gates, aimed to test each rover's
maneuverability.

This year's teams represent universities and colleges in Canada,
India, Poland and the United States, including two-time returning
champions Toronto's York University (2012 and 2009) and Oregon
State (2010 and 2008).

Details about the capabilities of this year's rovers are kept
under wraps by the teams. However, Sloan did tell us he expects
one rover to include an unmanned aerial vehicle, i.e.,
a drone.

"Other than that, I don't have any insight into unique system
features," Sloan said. "Like everyone else, I'm waiting to be
surprised next week in the field!"